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The Triad

The Faces of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade

The government deported a 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer.

Jonathan V. Last's avatar
Jonathan V. Last
March 18, 2025∙ Paid
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First: I’ll be live on Substack today at 1:00 p.m. EDT with epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina to talk about measles, vaccines, and all of the totally normal stuff which is happening right now in our newly “healthy” America.

Check your inbox for an email with a link at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

Second: Will Sommer’s False Flag newsletter is out and it is a forking banger.

How good is it? Tim Pool, being confronted by “far-left” skate punks, at a Cracker Barrel in West Virginia. (Allegedly.)


(Composite / Photos via Texas Civil Rights Project, Instagram, Screenshot)

1. Propaganda

Do you know why the Trump administration is broadcasting slickly produced videos of immigrants in chains as they are frog-marched around by armed and masked guards?

Two reasons.

The first is that many Americans like these sorts of displays. And always have.

Do you know what a “lynching postcard” is?1 In post-Civil War America people would take photos of the lynchings of African Americans and print them up as postcards. That’s right. Pictures of smiling white people next to a dead black person they had just murdered. Americans would trade these postcards and collect them. They’d even use them as actual postcards and send them through through the mail.2 Hey Uncle Jedidiah! We’re having a great time in Alabama. Wish you were here.

This practice persisted through the 1940s.

Don’t look away from this, because it’s the truth: There are Americans—lots of them—who get off on dominating the people they hate. The Hemingway line is terrifyingly true: “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”

So the first reason for these deportation videos is fan service.

The second reason is propaganda. Trump wants to convince the rest of America that the people he’s hurting deserve it. They must all be criminals, because look at them: They’re handcuffed and in chains. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know their stories. You don’t even really see their faces.

This propaganda should be countered. Here are three faces of Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade that every American should see.

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